I'm to the point with BO where I can't even stand to hear him talk. I have to turn it off. It took me years to get to that point with W.

accidental email

I think it had been over two years since I stopped getting political emails from my family, but I got one this week. Below is the original email and my response. For previous editions of this fun little game, see here and here.

-----

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA

By Lou Pritchett

Dear President Obama:

You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me.

You scare me because after months of exposure, I k now nothing about you.

You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.

You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.

You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don't understand it at its core.

You scare me because you lack humility and 'class', always blaming others.

You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.

You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the 'blame America' crowd and deliver this message abroad.

You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.

You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.

You scare me because you prefer 'wind mills' to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.

You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world.

You scare me because yo u have begun to use 'extortion' tactics against certain banks and corporations.

You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.

You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people.

You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient.

You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaughs, Hannitys, O'Relllys and Becks who offer opposing, conservative points of view.

You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.

Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.

Lou Pritchett


Note: Lou Pritchett is a former vice president of Procter & Gamble whose career at that company spanned 36 years before his retirement in 1989, and he is the author of the 1995 business book, Stop Paddling & Start Rocking the Boat.

Mr. Pritchett confirmed that he was indeed the author of the much-circulated "open letter." “I did write the 'you scare me' letter. I sent it to the NY Times but they never acknowledged or p ublished it. However, it hit the internet and according to the ‘experts’ has had over 500,000 hits.

----

Obama scares me too, for a few of the same reasons. These 3 in particular:

>You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild
>and irresponsible spending proposals.

When the Republican Congress moved in lock-step to pass everything
Bush/Cheney told them to, they were rightfully criticized by Democrats
as mindlessly following executive orders. Now Democrats are doing the
same thing. In many cases they're actually saying that they oppose
the legislation that they're voting in favor of, but believe it is
more important to support "their" President. It is hard to see what
the point of Congress is, from a check-and-balances perspective, if
they just do whatever the executive says. It scares me to see how
easily people in positions of extreme power will cynically invoke or
ignore important principles at their convenience.

>You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view >from intelligent people.

I find this scary too, and this is true of all presidents in recent
memory. More on this later.

>You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

The media is highly deferential to power. Bush had an abysmal
approval rating for much of his presidency, and still the media
refused to call him on his blatant lies and multiple crimes against
humanity. A popular president like BO will get and even easier time
from the media, which is pretty damn terrifying. Just like Congress,
the mainstream media has abandoned any adversarial function it should
be performing, if it ever actually served one at all.


That said, the rest of the list is fairly insane. What does it say
about the author that he can begin a list with "I know nothing about
Obama," then go on to list 19 things he knows about Obama? He claims
to even know Obama's deepest feelings and desires (e.g. "you falsely
believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient"). I guess if you
can simultaneously hold two contradictory beliefs, you can believe
pretty much anything, regardless of reality, which partially explains
the craziness here.

I won't address everything point by point, though I'm tempted, but
there are two general themes of his list that I'd like to comment on.
The first theme concerns these items:

> You scare me because you lack humility and 'class',
> always blaming others.

> You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned
> yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you
> refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who
> wish to see America fail.

> You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the
> 'blame America' crowd and deliver this message abroad.

The mainstream American media allows a certain a spectrum of opinion
about American foreign policy. On the right/nationalistic/

reactionary
extreme is the opinion that the US Government (hereafter "USG") is a
force for pure good in the world that is always perfectly morally
justified in anything it does and is always selflessly trying to
spread freedom and democracy across the globe. On the left/liberal
extreme is the opinion that the USG is a force for good in the world
that always acts with the purest intentions, but that has sometimes
gotten carried away in its quest for spreading freedom and democracy
and in a few isolated incidents has made regrettable mistakes. That
is the spectrum of opinion that is allowed in the US media (I say
"allowed" because editors and their bosses self-censor, not because of
any state censorship.)

The far right side can't stand even the suggestion that the USG has
ever done anything wrong, and so anyone who ever acknowledges American
misdeeds is instantly part of the "Blame America First Crowd," and
endlessly beaten over the head with this slur. This is objectionable
on several different levels.

One level of offensiveness is the inability or unwillingness to
distinguish between a group of people and their rulers. Is "America"
a nation of 300,000,000 people or the comparatively tiny group of
people that control the USG? To criticize the actions of a government
is not the same as criticizing the people of the nation, especially a
nation whose government often acts against the wishes and interests of
its population, as ours does.

So what would it mean to "wish to see America fail"? The overwhelming
majority of "radical extremists" who he's characterizing this way are
those who object to the actions of the USG, some of whom maybe even
wish for the dissolution of the government. But that doesn't mean
they wish harm on the 300,000,000 who live in the US; they think those
people would be better served with a different social arrangement.

Conservatives like Mr. Pritchett claim to value limited government.
They loved Reagan's "the government is the problem" line and supported
Gingrich when he led a shut down of the federal government in
opposition to Clinton. One would think such people would be cautious
about slinging accusations about "wishing to see America fail." But
given the breath-taking contradiction he chose to lead off this
tour-de-force screed, I don't suppose that connection has ever
occurred to him.

Beyond that, it should be noted that Obama himself is well within the
mainstream spectrum of opinion. And nobody within the spectrum
"blames America first." They all assume that America has noble
intentions, and any misdeeds they reluctantly acknowledge are taken to
be aberrant: it isn't really our fault because we were trying to help
but got carried away, or a few bad apples ruined it, or those
ungrateful Iraqis weren't willing to accept our help, etc.

My final note on that matter is that at no point does it have anything
to do with reality-based argument. There's no attempt to understand
the world, no argument as to why Obama's alleged "blame America first"
is factually incorrect or illogical. It is simply a smear designed to
demonize and avoid intelligent debate. If, as I would contend, the
unmistakeable reality is that foreign policy of the USG is not and
never has been about spreading freedom or democracy, and that it has
repeatedly immorally destroyed innocent lives around the world, should
we not acknowledge this as our first step to correcting it? (Not that
Obama does so.) Yelling "BLAME AMERICA FIRST" eliminates that
possibility, which is of course the entire point of yelling it. And
you have to yell it even at the people on the left end of the
permissible spectrum so that people outside it to the left (i.e. the
reality-based community made up of the vast majority of the rest of
the world) are ignored. And this is from the same guy who complains
about someone "refusing to listen or consider opposing points of view
from intelligent people."

So that wraps up my first general theme about discussion of American
foreign policy and "blame America first."

My second comment on general theme concerns the subtle bigotry running
through many of those items above plus these:

>You scare me because after months of exposure,

> I know nothing about you.

> You scare me because I do not know how you paid
> for your expensive Ivy League education and your
> upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.

> You scare me because you did not spend the formative years
> of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

> You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the
> Limbaughs, Hannitys, O'Relllys and Becks who offer opposing,
> conservative points of view.

Again, America is a nation of 300 million people, the vast majority of
whom can name an immigrant among their recent ancestors. The idea
that there is a single American culture or that spending 4 years of
your childhood in another country is necessarily sinister is
incoherent at best. It strikes me that when you combine that
xenophobia with the innuendo about mysteriousness about his life and
finances, it taps into the same pockets of fear and anger that in less
polite company express themselves as overt racism. Combine THAT with
the "Blame America" nonsense, and you get "Obama is a secret Muslim
working with the terrorists to destroy America, because after all he's
a nigger with a funny name so it is obvious." The conservative
commentators he listed regularly invoke this kind of bigotry, often in
not very subtle ways, and certainly deserve scorn. (Not that Obama
actually "demonizes" yet alone "wants to silence" them).

I suppose I'll leave it at that for now.

conversations

say, adspar, what is that obama fellow up to these days?  you know, that guy who was going to change everything for the better?  the one who gives us hope?

he's been busy.

that's good.  hope and change are hard work.  what a great guy.  so clean and articulate!  so charismatic and intelligent.  so what is he doing?  lots of great and wonderful things i'm sure!

yeah, well he's been changing bush's war on terror by escalating the slaughter of civilians in pakistan.  you didn't even know we were killing pakistanis did you?  

aren't they supposed to be our allies?  

oh well, no matter.  i'm sure he has very good reasons.  just like he has good reasons to send his troops to shoot pregnant women and destroy farms and crops in afghanistan.  you should have seen how articulately he gave that order!

that sounds kind of bad actually.  but i probably just don't know enough about it.  i'm sure he has access to secret information that makes this more understandable.  we should just trust his judgment on this.  he's not bush after all!  remember all those criticisms of bush he intelligently articulated in his campaign?  surely those criticisms prove his heart is pure and good.  yes, definitely, we should just trust him.

yeah, remember how he criticized bush for kidnapping people off the street and locking them in cages in guantanamo without any ability to challenge their detention?  obama is hoping and changing this by locking them in cages in bagram instead!  that probably sounds like it contradicts his campaign rhetoric, but don't worry, i'm sure you'll figure out some way to excuse him for it.

i don't know... i'll try hard...

i think you owe him that much.  he's working very hard to make sure there are no investigations or prosecutions of the well-documented widespread use of torture by bush's henchman.  he's working hard to make sure he can torture too.  so you better work hard to excuse, rationalize, or ignore anything he does that you don't like.

adspar, you're really such a downer.  i just want to feel good about the world, and have some hope.  times are really tough, so i don't think that's too much to ask for.  but you have to go and ruin it for me.  i don't think i'm going to ask you about politics any more.

constructive solutions: a See For Yourself first?

After publishing this post about my wildest dreams I got an email from a friend:

I think this is the first time I have read the changes you want to see enacted. Some of your points I agree with and some I do not. But I have wondered from time to time what you are actually looking for in a government/society so I was very pleased to read your post. Just wanted to say that.

It was a well-intentioned message, and I appreciated the thought, but I thought he was wrong. I thought I'd been making it pretty clear what I'd like to see.

For example, in the same month as that dreams post I published this lament of the destruction of the Bush years, and I don't think my disgust with basically everything that man did has been any secret. Was it not clear that I'd like to live in a country that doesn't invade other nations based on outrageous lies, destroy millions of lives, torture its captives, and whatever else you want to include as part of the rotten corpse of the Bush legacy?

Also in the same month as the first post, just a few days before it in fact, I wrote that the departing Bush gang were all criminals but will be protected by the rest of the US political class, including Obama. In case it wasn't obvious, if I'm going to live under the rule of a government, I'd like that government to hold its leaders to higher standards of conduct than anyone, rather than the current arrangement of a two-tiered justice system where the full force of the law is brought down on common people while political elites break the law with impunity. I'd like my government to prosecute war criminals for war crimes and to honor the treaties they've signed that obligate them to investigate and prosecute such crimes. Was that not clear before?

And in case it wasn't clear from this post, also in the same month as the others, I'd like my government to display the opposite priorities from the ones criticized. I'd like government to place higher priority on meaningful help for needy people than on endless expansion of the war machine or corporate welfare. Did I not get that message across?

Again, I thought my friend's message was a nice-hearted gesture, especially from someone who has often disagreed with me. But I just find the idea that I've never said want I wanted bizarre.

Maybe I'm sensitive to this issue because I've seen the same idea applied to critics far more eloquent than I am, and I suspect it is yet another way that people have found to dismiss challenges to their perspectives without actually engaging them. "Oh sure, Chomsky is a smart guy, but he's so negative. He never offers constructive solutions, he just criticizes everyone." They can just tune out criticism based on the nonsensical idea that it isn't productive. It seems to me that criticizing terrible actions is highly constructive, and that the solution is obvious: stop doing the terrible stuff. But Chomsky's oh-so-wearisome negativity becomes the first talking point brought up in response to anything he says, drowning out his important message with this distracting bullshit. And by the way, while in some cases people do that as a conscious strategy, I'm sure that many people do it automatically and without realizing it, like a built-in ideological defense mechanism. (It is kind of a version of "poor form." I don't like that guy, so I won't listen to him.)

But instead of speculating about that kind of cognitive dissonance management strategy applying to my friend, I'll gladly adopt a more generous interpretation of his message: that he read my list of dreams as specific policy positions I'd like to see, and that seemed fundamentally different (and more interesting) to him than the criticism of past government actions that he's mostly seen me write. And I guess that's fair enough, at least for the first sentence of his message.

But as for the rest of what he wrote, his confusion about what I'm "looking for in a government/society" confuses me. Maybe I don't really have a good sense of how closely what I've written here keeps up with what is going on in my head. But as I've already mentioned, several of the items on that list had been mentioned in weeks before it, and most of the others in the months before (I assume, but I don't feel like looking it up right now). And all of them seem very straightforward extensions of the general philosophies I routinely express. So maybe he just doesn't pay close attention to my writing, and/or maybe he just didn't pick his words very carefully.

I'll emphasize that I don't mean to give any impression that I'm personally bent out of shape about his comment. I'm not. I read a post at another blog recently about a private email exchange that made me think of several of my own that I've considered writing about, including this one. I chose to go ahead with this one because of its similarity to the broader pattern I've observed where critics of power are dismissed for not providing "constructive solutions" or whatever, and I think that pattern is worthy of comment. So I used this personal example as a launching point for the discussion.

Repeat

Chris Floyd:

How many times do you have to see it? How many times must it be shoved in your face, crammed down your throat, brought down on your head like a ton of bricks, before you get the picture? When it comes to the lineaments and methods of empire -- war, murder, torture, extortion, and deceit -- there is no difference, none whatsoever, between the hip, cool "progressives" in Team Obama and the gaggle of militarist goons who preceded them.

Go read the rest!

Obama Bombs Pakistan, Kills Afghani Civilians, Defends Bush

Chris Floyd documents the reality of the BO Presidency, making it clear that my dreams won't be coming true.  I wonder whose dreams these are:

Why speak of Gaza -- where the relentless and ruthless Israeli assault on civilians ended almost precisely with the ascension of Barack Obama to high office -- when that newly-ascended embodiment of hope is already drawing first blood in his marshalship of the "War on Terror"? Already, Obama has ordered his first drone missile attacks on the sovereign territory of Pakistan, an American ally; already he has killed his first civilians with the faceless, soulless weapons of remote-control mass death. 

What's more, the Commander-in-Chief has already overseen his first mass slaughter of civilians in Afghanistan, the land he calls "the central front in the War on Terror," where he plans to commit tens of thousands of more troops in a massive escalation of a war that his new Terror War envoy, Richard Holbrooke, now says will last longer than the Vietnam War. As MSNBC reports, none other than the U.S.-installed Afghan president himself, Hamid Karzai, condemned the killing of 16 Afghan civilians, including three children and two women, in a ground-and-air attack by U.S forces on Saturday. Escalating the conflict will mean much more of this, of course. In any case, Karzai's protests will cut no ice with the new regime in Washington; he is yesterday's man, yesterday's puppet, and his increasingly frantic and forthright denunciations of the mass slaughter of his people by American and NATO forces will not be tolerated much longer. Obama and his team are already manipulating the politics of the occupied land to ensure that a "dream ticket" of politicians beholden to Obama, not Bush, will "wrest control away from Mr Karzai," as the Independent reports. 

And why not? Shouldn't the new Caesar be allowed to appoint his own men to govern his dominions?

...

Of course, such things aren't serious. They don't really matter. Why should you waste your beautiful mind on something like that? 

Especially when you can be mesmerized by Obama's amazing "First 100 Hours," when he has already revolutionized American policy by, for example, restricting the overt use of torture to the torture techniques approved of by the Pentagon -- although his own intelligence supremo, Dennis Blair, refuses to say if "waterboarding" should be considered torture, and assures Congress that he will examine "whether certain coercive techniques have been effective"; i.e. which torture techniques should be continued. There is also Obama's bold ordering of the (eventual) closure of the Gitmo camp and the handful of CIA detention center,while leaving alone the Pentagon's numerous and far worse gulag centers -- where thousands of Terror War captives languish without charges, representation, or the slightest legal recourse. And of course, there is his heartening decision to go to court to defend Bush's multiple rape of American liberty: the years-long illegal surveillance scheme, which Obama had voted to support while still in the Senate.

What does it say?

Think about this.

The President and Vice-President of the US openly admit to having committed crimes under domestic and international law. They are criminals under US law and they are war criminals. They ordered wireless surveillance in violation of FISA law, openly admit to having done so, and thus are criminals. They ordered or approved of water-boarding, which is a violation of international law an which the US has previously prosecuted people for doing under torture laws, and thus are war criminals. This can't be controversial because they openly admit it. There's simply no disputing that these are the facts of the situation.

And in response to this, the political elite in the US are unified in their response: Bush and Cheney should not be held responsible for this in any way. They should not be impeached, and they should not be prosecuted. We're talking about the entire US political machinery, not just close party allies of these guys. From the idiot talking heads on TV to the idiots writing op-eds for the major papers, to Nancy "impeachment is off the table" Pelosi, to Barrack "look forward, not backward" Obama, absolutely everyone is lined up on the side of the openly criminal regime. They shall not be punished.

What does that say about the United States?

Strains on this simple observation have been circulating through the blogs I tend to read these days - Silber, Floyd, Greenwald - and if you want me to point you towards particularly well written pieces I'll be happy to do so, but what I've written here is the gist of it. Our highest elected officials are openly criminal, and nobody within the official leadership structures gives a flying fuck.

BO recently commented on Israel's war against humanity in Gaza something to the effect that if someone lobbed rockets at his family, he'd do everything in his power to respond, too. And when asked if Bush should be prosecuted for his crimes, he said we should look forward, not backwards. Can anyone spot the hypocrisy? This is supposed to be the great new progressive hope for America?

What does that say about America?

Bush and Cheney are widely despised. Their approval ratings have been abysmal, and at times polls have shown a majority of Americans in favor of impeachment. And that is without any major leadership on the impeachment issue. Can you imagine how popular a high-profile politician would become by fighting for impeachment? Anyone who did that would instantly gain hero status for huge numbers of people throughout the world. And yet nobody is willing to do this.

What does that say about America?

yes, Obama is the same as Bush

A recent commenter here objected to my likening of BO to Bush, citing BO's "superior moral grounding" as a reason for optimism. Chris Floyd makes a mockery of this argument:

It's true that the United States government is facing a severe and prolonged budget crisis. But what does it say about the underlying moral philosophy of an administration when its first target for budget cuts are programs designed to help ordinary people – including the weakest among us? When it will not cut a penny from a war machine that has only made the nation more and more insecure over the long decades of its ascendancy, involving the American people in an endless series of conflicts in which they have no business, and no genuine national interests at stake? If urgent cuts in government spending are needed, why would you not look first to this gargantuan swamp of waste and corruption and dangerous meddling? Instead, Obama proposes to pour even more money into it, and to increase the dangerous meddling.

The president-elect has made his fundamental priorities clear – for anyone who wants to see them. The war machine and the financial markets will continue to be gorged and comforted in their wonted manner. Programs to help ordinary citizens, programs to enhance the quality of life for individuals and the well-being of society, will be the first – perhaps the only – areas to feel the budget axe. Whatever you may think of the efficacy of such programs, this ordering of priorities -- war and profits over people -- bespeaks the same depraved sensibility that has prevailed for generations in Washington. It is the same old rancid swill in a stylish new container.

to advance his convictions

I don't have any plans to note the official transition from one evil emperor to the next with any special fanfare, on this blog or otherwise, but TomDispatch has a good piece on Bush's legacy. Spoiler alert: he destroyed everything he touched and piled up gruesome numbers of dead bodies:

Eight years of bodies, dead, broken, mutilated, abused; eight years of ruined lives down countless drains; eight years of massive destruction to places from Baghdad to New Orleans where nothing of significance was ever rebuilt: all this was brought to us by a President, now leaving office without apology, who said the following in his first inaugural address: "I will live and lead by these principles: to advance my convictions with civility… to call for responsibility and try to live it as well."

Heros and Criminals, Shoe-Throwers and Presidents

In terms of the moral significance of the action, throwing a shoe at somebody is somewhere between calling him a motherfucker and punching him (the merciless beatings al-Zaidi has endured are far greater crimes than throwing shoes). It is basically like a hard slap in the face. The primary purpose is to humiliate the victim, but there is also the known risk, if not outright intention, of inflicting minor physical harm. Because of the slightly violent nature of the act, I wouldn't throw a shoe at Bush to make a political point. And I wouldn't call someone who did a hero.

If I accepted the criminal justice system as an appropriate avenue for dealing with these kinds of situations, I'd probably say throwing a shoe at a politician deserves a very minor sentence - a few nights in jail, a small fine, some community service, probation, or whatever. I'd definitely say that anyone who condemns Muntathar al-Zaidi even the slightest bit without noting that his minor transgression was an emotional reaction to a series of unspeakably horrific organized crimes committed by George Bush is so morally depraved as to be unworthy of commenting on such matters.

So I understand why many people consider al-Zaidi a hero. He bravely stood up to a powerful evil, knowing he would face severe consequences for doing so. There is something heroic about that, but I'd prefer to see heroic acts that don't involve even minor levels of violence.

That said, I'll add my powerless voice to those calling for al-Zaidi's immediate release. And I'll continue to call for real criminals like George Bush to face justice.

when science is really worth it

If you manage to make it to the 22nd page of this paper*, you'll read one of the most entertaining paragraphs in the history of science. (By the way MS is "mortality salience," which basically means being confronted with the inevitability of your own death.)

More recently, Solomon, Pyszczynski, Cohen and Ogilvie (in press) demonstrated that a reminder of death increased peoples’ reports of flying fantasies and desire to fly; a behavior that, for humans without mechanical assistance, clearly violates the laws of nature. As importantly, asking people to imagine themselves flying eliminated a widely replicated MS-induced worldview defense. Specifically, whereas MS increased affection for President Bush among American participants relative to controls (replicating Landau et al., 2004b), imagining oneself flying completely eliminated this effect. These results are shown in Figure 2.

Here is the amazing Figure 2:


Please share with me your favorite part about the paragraph or the figure. I think my favorite part is the implication that if you ever find yourself in the upsetting condition of feeling affectionate towards George Bush, just imagine yourself flying and you'll be cured.


* Landau, M. J., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (2007). On the compatibility of terror management theory and perspectives on human evolution. Evolutionary Psychology, 5, 476-519.

once again Obama is the same as Bush. but you don't care.

Jesus fucking Christ people, if this article doesn't show you what Barrack Obama is, nothing will. As Who Is IOZ? and Stop Me Before I Vote Again have pointed out:

Now, as Mr. Obama moves closer to assuming responsibility for Guantánamo, his pledge to close the detention center is bringing to the fore thorny questions under consideration by his advisers. They include where Guantánamo’s detainees could be held in this country, how many might be sent home and a matter that people with ties to the Obama transition team say is worrying them most: What if some detainees are acquitted or cannot be prosecuted at all?

The biggest worry among people BO has chosen to surround himself with is that they won't be able to continue to jail people who they can't prove have done anything wrong.

THIS IS EXACTLY THE SAME AS BUSH YOU FUCKING OBAMA SUPPORTING MORONS. THIS IS NOT CHANGE. THIS IS THE SAME FUCKING THING, MAYBE MOVED TO A NEW BUILDING.

But liberals don't care about the principles involved. They don't care about justice, human rights, any of that pussy shit. They never did. They just care that someone on their team is the one doing the jailing:

“You can’t be a purist and say there’s never any circumstance in which a democratic society can preventively detain someone,” said one civil liberties lawyer, David D. Cole, a Georgetown law professor who has been a critic of the Bush administration.

We're a democratic society? Oh, he must have meant "Democratic President."

But particularly inasmuch as the Bush administration invoked that authority as a basis for its much-criticized detention policies, a move by Mr. Obama to seek explicit authorization for indefinite detention without trial would be seen by some of his supporters as a betrayal.

Impossible! They're too covered in gooey change juice to perceive anything BO does as betrayal.

But human rights groups have been mounting arguments to counter pressure that they say is building on Mr. Obama to show toughness, perhaps by echoing the Bush administration’s insistence that some detainees may need to be held indefinitely.

How the flying fuck is this tough?

“I’m afraid of people getting released in the name of human rights and doing terrible things,” Mr. Wittes said in an interview.

I'm so tough that I'm going to lock up little boys who might have thrown rocks! And torture them! This shows my toughness! I won't be a pussy and release people who I can't prove have done anything wrong, because I'm scared that they might come back and hurt me. But I'm tough!



I fucking hate everyone.

Egregious

Barack Obama will move swiftly to unpick many of what he sees as the most egregious acts of the Bush administration when he enters the White House in January, including restrictions on stem cell research and moves to allow oil drilling in wilderness areas, a leading member of his transition team said yesterday.

Three key words: "what he sees."

Notice how the list of "the most egregious violations" doesn't include domestic warrantless surveillance, indefinite detention, torture, extraordinary rendition, launching illegal wars of aggression and other war crimes, election fraud, politicizing the justice department, immunity for corporate crimes, bail-outs for banks, etc.

ballers and blood-drenched tyrants

So, yeah, I'm pretty disgusted with how stupid sports coverage is. And pro sports in general. This doesn't help.

When something is truly deserved

"Every so often this just has to be said: Fuck you, George Bush."

My Closing Ceremonies

I'm paying very little attention to the Olympics. I haven't cared much about them since I was a child, and I'm getting more turned off to them every time. The commercialism and nationalism are pretty gross. And this year there's a variety of human rights controversies because of the authoritarianism of the Chinese host government.

I wonder if anything could make me like the Olympics even less?













Yeah, that oughta do it.

Why I won't vote: "Tennis on the Titanic"

During the Gore/Bush/Nader presidential election, while the entire nation was hypnotized by the spectacle, I had a vision. I saw the Titanic churning through the waters of the North Atlantic toward an iceberg looming in the distance, while the passengers and crew concentrated on a tennis game taking place on deck.

In our election-obsessed culture, everything else going on in the world - war, hunger, official brutality, sickness, the violence of everyday life for huge numbers of people - is swept out of the way while the media covers every volley of the candidates. Thus, the superficial crowds out the meaningful, and this is very useful for those who do not want citizens to look beyond the surface of the system. Hidden by the contest of the candidates are the real issues of race, class, war, and peace, which the public is not supposed to think about.

That's the opening of a Howard Zinn essay included in his book A Power Governments Cannot Suppress. Here's the closing.

The ferocity of the contest for the presidency in recent elections conceals the agreement between both parties on fundamentals. The evidence for this statement lies in eight years of the Clinton-Gore administration, whose major legislative accomplishments - destroying welfare, imposing more punitive sentences on criminals, increasing Pentagon spending - were part of the Republican agenda.

The Demacrats and the Republicans do not dispute the continued corporate control of the economy. Neither party endorses free national healthcare, proposes extensive low-cost housing, demands a minimum income for all Americans, or supports a truly progressive income tax to diminish the huge gap between rich and poor. Both support the death penalty and growth of prisons. Both believe in a large military establishment, in land mines and nuclear weapons and the cruel use of sanctions against the people of Cuba.

Perhaps when, after the next election, the furor dies down over who really won the tennis match and we get over our anger at the referee's calls and the final, disputed score, we will finally break the hypnotic spell of the game and look around. We may then think about whether the ship is slowly going down and whether there are enough lifeboats and what we should do about all that.

This analogy is pretty fucking good. So fuck Gore and Bush and fuck the 2000 election. Fuck BO and McCain and this stupid election too. All the candidates are the same. Stop wasting your efforts on this bullshit.

finishing up strong

George W. Bush, restoring dignity to the White House:

The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter."

He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.

Mr Bush, whose second and final term as President ends at the end of the year, then left the meeting at the Windsor Hotel in Hokkaido where the leaders of the world's richest nations had been discussing new targets to cut carbon emissions.

One official who witnessed the extraordinary scene said afterwards: "Everyone was very surprised that he was making a joke about America's record on pollution."

Mr Bush also faced criticism at the summit after Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, was described in the White House press pack given to journalists as one of the "most controversial leaders in the history of a country known for government corruption and vice".

The White House apologised for what it called "sloppy work" and said an official had simply lifted the characterisation from the internet without reading it.

Concluding the three-day event, leaders from the G8 and developing countries proclaimed a "shared vision" on climate change. However, they failed to bridge differences between rich and emerging nations on curbing emissions.

Via

TomDispatch: Iran, Oil, Reality

The latest TomDispatch argues that the attack against Iran urged by the Cheney faction of the Bush Regime is looking less likely, largely due to the tremendously negative consequences of likely Iranian retaliation strategies. Notably, the price of oil would explode beyond its already stratospheric level. The piece is shaped by the idea that eventually reality catches up to people who act as if they can create their own reality, which certainly applies to Bush and Cheney.

Impeach? Waste of time say Democrats

As far as I know it hasn't gotten much mainstream coverage but Dennis Kucinich brought articles of impeachment against Bush on Monday. Beside being abundantly deserved, impeachment might be one of the only ways to prevent attacks on Iran (not to mention Pakistan). So the Democrats must be pretty excited about this, what with them being the opposition party who love truth and justice and all, right?

As they have previously, Democratic leaders staunchly oppose Kucinich's impeachment effort. They expect to table the resolution by referring it to the Judiciary Committee, where they expect it to die.

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) suggested yesterday that engaging in a lengthy debate over impeaching Bush in the waning days of his administration is not a productive use of the House's time.

Why, it is almost as if the Democrats don't care about the law, the Constitution, justice or preventing wars. Boy that Obama guy gives some inspirational speeches though!